Some tweets referenced sex and drugs...."I don't agree it was obvious, and in fact it appears that someone went to great lengths to make it appear it was actually from the mayor," Settingsgaard said in an email response to questions.

FTFA: By March 10, the bio information was updated to indicate it was a parody account. It had about 50 tweets and as many followers.

In my estimation, there is no possible way this action will backfire by causing numerous other people to create additional fake accounts. Furthermore, there is no way that this harassment will lead to greater negative publicity for the mayor than just letting the troll lie would have.

EvaDewer:FTFA: By March 10, the bio information was updated to indicate it was a parody account. It had about 50 tweets and as many followers.

In my estimation, there is no possible way this action will backfire by causing numerous other people to create additional fake accounts. Furthermore, there is no way that this harassment will lead to greater negative publicity for the mayor than just letting the troll lie would have.

The settlement from this should be quite nice. It is questionable that this qualified as "impersonating" a public official to the point of criminal behaviour, and at most could qualify for libel or slander. A half decent lawyer should be able to successfully argue this to be an abuse of resources.

At least they were honest about what the were searching for. Real news would be if a parody twitter account was made, mayor stalks perpetrator plants a pound of coke in the dudes car and has him pulled over. THATS news...and also gangster.....